We need an in-depth post on moral circle expansion (MCE), minoritarianism, and winning. I expect EA’s MCE projects to be less popular than anti-abortion in the US (37% say ought to be illegal in all or most cases, while for one example veganism is at 6%) . I guess the specifics of how the anti-abortion movement operated may be too in the weeds of contingent and peculiar pseudodemocracy, winning elections with less than half of the votes and securing judges and so on, but it seems like we don’t want to miss out on studying this. There may be insights.
While many EAs would (I think rightly) consider the anti-abortion people colleagues as MCE activists, some EAs may also (I think debatably) admire republicans for their ruthless, shrewd, occasionally thuggish commitment to winning. Regarding the latter, I would hope to hear out a case for principles over policy preference, keeping our hands clean, refusing to compromise our integrity, and so on. I’m about 50:50 on where I’d expect to fall personally, about the playing fair and nice stuff. I guess it’s a question of how much republicans expect to suffer from externalities of thuggishness, if we want to use them to reason about the price we’re willing to put on our integrity.
Moreover, I think this “colleagues as MCE activists” stuff is under-discussed. When you steelman the anti-abortion movement, you assume that they understand multiplication as well as we do, and are making a difficult and unhappy tradeoff about the QALY’s lost to abortions needed by pregancies gone wrong or unclean black-market abortions or whathaveyou. I may feel like I oppose the anti-abortion people on multiplicationist/consequentialist grounds (I also just don’t think reducing incidence of disvaluable things by outlawing them is a reasonable lever), but things get interesting when I model them as understanding the tradeoffs they’re making.
(To be clear, this isn’t “EA writer, culturally coded as a democrat for whatever college/lgbt/atheist reasons, is using a derogatory word like ‘thuggish’ to describe the outgroup”, I’m alluding to empirical claims about how the structure of the government interacts with population density to create minority rule, and making a moral judgment about the norm-dissolving they fell back on when obama appointed a judge.)
(I also just don’t think reducing incidence of disvaluable things by outlawing them is a reasonable lever)
This is a pretty strong stance to take! Most people believe that it is reasonable to ban at least some disvaluable things, like theft, murder, fraud etc., in an attempt to reduce their incidence. Even libertarians who oppose the existence of the state altogether generally think it will be replaced by some private alternative system which will effectively ban these things.
right, yeah, I think it’s a fairly common conclusion regarding a reference class like drugs and sex work, but for a reference class like murder and theft it’s a much rarer (harder to defend) stance.
I don’t know if it’s on topic for the forum to dive into all of my credences over all the claims and hypotheses involved here, I just wanted to briefly leak a personal opinion or inclination in OP.
We need an in-depth post on moral circle expansion (MCE), minoritarianism, and winning. I expect EA’s MCE projects to be less popular than anti-abortion in the US (37% say ought to be illegal in all or most cases, while for one example veganism is at 6%) . I guess the specifics of how the anti-abortion movement operated may be too in the weeds of contingent and peculiar pseudodemocracy, winning elections with less than half of the votes and securing judges and so on, but it seems like we don’t want to miss out on studying this. There may be insights.
While many EAs would (I think rightly) consider the anti-abortion people colleagues as MCE activists, some EAs may also (I think debatably) admire republicans for their ruthless, shrewd, occasionally thuggish commitment to winning. Regarding the latter, I would hope to hear out a case for principles over policy preference, keeping our hands clean, refusing to compromise our integrity, and so on. I’m about 50:50 on where I’d expect to fall personally, about the playing fair and nice stuff. I guess it’s a question of how much republicans expect to suffer from externalities of thuggishness, if we want to use them to reason about the price we’re willing to put on our integrity.
Moreover, I think this “colleagues as MCE activists” stuff is under-discussed. When you steelman the anti-abortion movement, you assume that they understand multiplication as well as we do, and are making a difficult and unhappy tradeoff about the QALY’s lost to abortions needed by pregancies gone wrong or unclean black-market abortions or whathaveyou. I may feel like I oppose the anti-abortion people on multiplicationist/consequentialist grounds (I also just don’t think reducing incidence of disvaluable things by outlawing them is a reasonable lever), but things get interesting when I model them as understanding the tradeoffs they’re making.
(To be clear, this isn’t “EA writer, culturally coded as a democrat for whatever college/lgbt/atheist reasons, is using a derogatory word like ‘thuggish’ to describe the outgroup”, I’m alluding to empirical claims about how the structure of the government interacts with population density to create minority rule, and making a moral judgment about the norm-dissolving they fell back on when obama appointed a judge.)
This is a pretty strong stance to take! Most people believe that it is reasonable to ban at least some disvaluable things, like theft, murder, fraud etc., in an attempt to reduce their incidence. Even libertarians who oppose the existence of the state altogether generally think it will be replaced by some private alternative system which will effectively ban these things.
right, yeah, I think it’s a fairly common conclusion regarding a reference class like drugs and sex work, but for a reference class like murder and theft it’s a much rarer (harder to defend) stance.
I don’t know if it’s on topic for the forum to dive into all of my credences over all the claims and hypotheses involved here, I just wanted to briefly leak a personal opinion or inclination in OP.
Jamie Harris at Sentience Institute authored a report on “Social Movement Lessons From the US Anti-Abortion Movement” that may be of interest.
perfect, thanks!